


You're My Home

by Howlingdawn



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, NO ONE USES IT ENOUGH, Romance, i just love lifespan difference angst ok, set in my We Could Not Stay verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:28:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23566084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Howlingdawn/pseuds/Howlingdawn
Summary: T'Lal met Iris when she was four years old, and they've been inseparable ever since. But after ninety years, the lifespan difference between Vulcans and humans is finally catching up to them, and T'Lal faces a difficult decision.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Spock & Original Female Character(s), Spock & T'Lal, T'Lal/Iris Jackson
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	You're My Home

**Author's Note:**

> Written for startrekkingaroundasgard's birthday writing challenge on Tumblr! My prompt was "You're my home"

T’Lal sat loosely cross-legged on the grass of her parents’ estate in Kenya. Behind her, her extended family gathered, her aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers, nieces and nephews, blood relatives and chosen family, everyone who had been able to come to celebrate what would likely be Nyota’s final birthday. Mingling with them, reminiscing her youthful days aboard the _Enterprise_ , remembering all the decades in between – it all served to remind her that, no matter how far she put her Vulcan roots behind her, she remained more Vulcan than nearly everyone she had grown up with, and she felt each absent face all the more keenly for it.

“Hey.”

Iris crouched beside her, her movements slowed by the stiffness of age. Whereas T’Lal had scarcely reached middle age, her hair still more brunette than grey, Iris’s hair had become as white as Jaylah’s years ago, her skin now lined by wrinkles that T’Lal’s fingers absently traced when they kissed and when T’Lal laid in their bed beside her, not needing to sleep but finding each moment with her wife more precious with every passing year.

“It’s beautiful out here,” Iris remarked, far from the first time she had said so since they arrived a week ago.

She was correct. The open savannah sprawled around them, teeming with life. Birds sang, zebras bleated, elephants trumpeted, all the animals creating a background music that was endearing in its chaos, beloved for being simply natural, a rare treat for someone who lived aboard a starship most of the time. The only flaw, perhaps, was the clouded over sky, tinging everything dull and grey.

But T’Lal knew why she brought up the subject so often.

“You want to retire.”

It wasn’t a question – this had been a long time coming. Iris had taken a promotion that allowed her to continue serving aboard a starship whilst accommodating the increasing limitations of her advancing age, but it had always been set in stone that her career would end long before T’Lal was ready to let go of hers, and what had been a distant truth when they fell in love had become their very immediate reality.

“I do,” she admitted quietly.

T’Lal closed her eyes, calling upon the limited emotional control she had allowed Dad and Suna to teach her as she struggled not to cry out that it wasn’t fair, that life and death were stealing everyone and everything from her that had given her blessed stability when her formative years were so cursed by chaos. “When?”

She could hear Iris running her fingers through the grass and dirt, knew how she enjoyed the warm sunlight on her skin. “My ninety-fourth birthday is next month. It would be nice to have a home on solid, unmoving ground by the time I’m ninety-five.”

_A year._

“You don’t have to come with me,” she broached hesitantly. “You’re still fairly young, by Vulcan standards. I won’t make you give up your life for me.”

Oh, what she wouldn’t give for the simple privilege to grow old at the same time as her wife.

“Iris-”

“No.” Iris interlaced their fingers together, a touch T’Lal had taken for granted since they were so, so young, and gently turned T’Lal to face her. “Look at me, _t’hy’la_.”

Taking a steadying breath, T’Lal obeyed, and found herself, as always, just as struck by her beauty as she had been when they were lovestruck teenagers. “You’re a nomad,” she said, her voice tender with a lifetime of love, the only hint of harshness a tang of bittersweetness. “No planet would have you, so you made your home in the stars, exploring the galaxy, protecting everyone who needs protecting, and that’s where you belong. I’ve had ninety wonderful, _wonderful_ years with you, and I’ve known this was coming for every single one of them. I won’t tether you now.”

“Iris…” T’Lal tried again.

She knew what she should say. What she _had_ to say. That it didn’t matter, that she would suspend or even give up her career to stay by Iris’s side, that the most important thing in the universe was their love.

But she knew what it meant to live on a planet. On Vulcan, she would be scorned for having emotions, and on Earth, she would be scorned for resembling a Romulan. She had found acceptance aboard starships, amongst the crews who became her family, with a job that gave her purpose. She had built a life that kept her insecurities at bay, that made her whole and herself in spite of the traumas of her early years.

She didn’t want to leave it behind.

Iris leaned in, gently kissing her cheek, the tear that slipped from her eye staining T’Lal’s cheek as well. “I love you.”

Wiping away the tear with a brush of her thumb, Iris stood and walked away.

T’Lal rediscovered her voice far too late. “Iris!”

If she heard, she didn’t turn back.

T’Lal groaned, burying her face in her hands. _Damn it, T’Lal._

“May I see you inside, T’Lal?”

Her dad’s steady voice was like an anchor. She had never even remotely wanted to suppress her emotions, and she had always been able to hear the undercurrent of emotion in his tone, but it was in times like this when she understood why they did it. Hiding your emotions was never easier than letting yourself feel, but sometimes it was… simpler. “I’m coming.”

Looking at him was almost jarring after Iris. Despite being one of the older members of their parents’ crew, he still looked younger than each one who was still alive. “You seem upset.”

Despite the situation, she couldn’t help but chuckle at his awkward way of understating human emotions, unchanged for ninety-four years. “I am.”

“Iris plans to retire, I presume.”

“She does.”

As they stepped into the living room of her parents’ home, designed with Vulcan efficiency and decorated with colorful human charm, she stopped by the fireplace, looking at the array of family photos atop the mantle. They spanned the decades, ranging from before her parents knew each other to one of her youngest sister’s newest great-grandchild, born mere weeks ago. She lingered over one taken when she and Iris were still young, when life was simple. “You left Starfleet when Nyota decided to retire.”

“I did.” Dad came up beside her, his hands clasped loosely behind his back, gazing softly at the picture of his young daughters.

“Why?”

“I felt my time there was complete,” he answered. “There was a time, shortly after Vulcan’s destruction, when I would have left had it not been for Ambassador Spock. As you know, I did leave upon his death. Both times, I was pulled back by a very simple fact: The others were in Starfleet. Jim, Nyota, Leonard, Mr. Scott, Hikaru, Pavel. They are my family, and so long as our crew was more or less intact, I had reason to remain. But as time went on, that family dispersed, and I faced the decision of clinging to the past or forging a new future.”

“And you forged a new future,” T’Lal murmured.

Dad nodded. “I designed a home I can pass on when Nyota and I no longer have need of it, and I have remained by my wife’s side to care for her when she needs me, and to be there when she wants me. And it has given me ample time to consider possible futures once Nyota has passed.”

She knew that he dreaded that day despite what his clinical voice suggested, but it still made her wince to hear it mentioned so casually. Watching Nyota’s illness slowly but surely overtake her had been painful for them all, the strong, vibrant woman becoming frailer by the day, and Iris could soon be in a similar position. “Was it easy?”

“No,” he said instantly. “Leaving behind the career that allowed me to find acceptance before I was entirely ready, while it was something I had done before, was not a simple thing. We had our share of arguments over my feelings on the matter at the beginning. And knowing now that this time is nearly at a close…” He trailed off, closing his eyes, and T’Lal let him have the silence to maintain his composure. “However,” he added when he was ready, “it was worth the struggle of adjusting. It always has been, and it always will be.”

T’Lal twisted her wedding ring around her finger, a silver band engraved with a pattern of entwined irises and roses, the Earth equivalent of the Vulcan flower she had been named after. “Did you know that when you agreed to retire with her?”

Dad considered his response. “I do not believe it was that simple,” he eventually began, choosing his words with care. “I knew that I wanted to be with her for as long as I could, but I was also apprehensive of how much my life would change for something temporary. It took some time to ultimately decide to retire with her.”

T’Lal had never hesitated to do anything with Iris before – at least, not in their careers. She had hesitated when Iris asked her out, and later when she proposed, because she had never believed herself worthy of Iris’s love – and here she was, proving herself right with all of this hesitating – but when it came to their careers, there had never been hesitation. They decided to join Starfleet together. They attended the Academy together. They served on the same ships together.

Shouldn’t retiring together be the culmination of all of that?

“What changed your mind?”

“Like you, I do not have a home planet. Not quite. I did, however, have my family.” He softened, his gaze lingering on a picture of the crew before T’Lal was born, and she felt the familiar pang of grief at the sight of Uncles Jim and Scotty. “When I had lost everything, they were my home. In our youth, it was difficult to distinguish that family from Starfleet itself, but after they had left, when I considered remaining in Starfleet after Nyota’s retirement, I realized that, without them at my side, and particularly without my wife, it would no longer be home. So I believe the question you must ask yourself, T’Lal, is this: Would Starfleet continue to feel like home if you knew Iris lived elsewhere?”

“No.”

For the first time all afternoon, the answer came immediately, instilling her with clarity. “You’re my home,” she said. “You, Nyota, my sisters… Iris.”

She loved the stars. Flying amongst them aboard a starship was very nearly all she had ever known. It offered her freedom, purpose, and she treasured her experiences.

But she had always had family to come home to. Family to experience those things with her. Family waiting for her after vacations, after school, after away missions. She had always shared her quarters with someone, always lived with someone else’s presence cluttering up her room. Her time in Starfleet had always been shared with the family she loved. And since she was four years old, that family had included Iris.

_I have to go._

“I have to go,” she repeated aloud, nearly stumbling over herself as she turned to hurry from the room.

“T’Lal,” Dad called.

She paused in the doorway, turning back to see the twinkle of a smile in his eyes. “Kenya is a wonderful place for Vulcans to retire.”

She smiled for them both. “Iris does love elephants.”

“Indeed she does.” He tilted his chin to the door. “Go.”

Needing no further urging, she ran out of the room, and found Iris leaning on the railing of their guest room’s balcony. “Iris!”

Iris spun around, eyes wide, and T’Lal belatedly realized she could feel her burst of emotion through their bond. Almost skidding to a halt beside her, it felt like they were young again, back when T’Lal was eagerly accepting Iris’s proposal and they had their whole lives ahead of them, lit by a brilliant warp trail amongst the light of a million stars. But she was careful of their age, minding the darkness between them, cupping Iris’s cheeks with the utmost tenderness. “I want to retire with you.”

Iris caught her wrists, looking up at her with concern. “I don’t want you to feel-”

“I know,” she interrupted. “But I’m in security, and there are plenty of people on Earth who need protecting. It won’t be as exciting as fighting alien armies, but so long as I can come home to you, I don’t care. You’re my _wife_ , Iris. You’re my best friend, my soulmate, my _home_. I can’t have you forever, but I won’t trade the years we have left for a simple career.”

Tears wavered in Iris’s eyes. “Really?” she whispered.

“Really,” T’Lal whispered back. “Til death do us part, remember?”

Beaming, tears running down her cheeks, Iris threw her arms around T’Lal, stretching up to kiss her. T’Lal dropped her arms to hold her, steadying her when she wobbled, gathering her close. “I love you,” Iris breathed into the kiss. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too, _t’hy’la_.”

Above them, the clouds had parted.

Entwined in each other’s arms, the sun shone down upon them.


End file.
